Ingela Bohm's Blog, page 51

Cutting Edge (Pax #4) teaser

The stage hand glanced at Jamie and laid his hand on the door handle. Ready?

Jamie looked around at his little band family, eyebrows raised in question. Becca gave a slight nod. Cal’s lips pressed together. Michael tried to look unaffected, but when Jamie’s eyes met his, a broad grin brightened his face. Unable to keep from smiling back, Jamie tore his eyes away and gave a nod of confirmation to the stage hand.

The whole process took less than three seconds. Then the door opened, and Pax went out into the roar of the post-show meet and greet.

By now, the flurry of fans descending on them felt familiar and safe. Years of touring, interviews, photos and autographs had accustomed them to being at the centre of attention at all times. In the beginning, back when Pax really took off in the late seventies, Jamie had struggled with it for a while. Burned by the betrayal of Adam the photographer and the crazy Swedish fan, he’d been expecting tragedy at every corner. But now, nine years down the road, the bustle of signing records and pictures and bootlegs and body parts had become humdrum. Sometimes it was even boring.

Not so today. They’d just finished a major UK tour, and fans were delirious with equal parts joy and despair. As Pax took their seats at the two tables, laden with sparkling water and a barrage of multi-coloured pens, Jamie smiled at the agitation that rippled through the queue. People were wild-eyed, clutching precious mementoes to be offered like sacrifices to the gods of prog rock. It was a miracle they all stayed in line – a virtue as British as they came, and one to be truly grateful for.

“Hello,” an out-of-breath teenager said, half dropping, half pushing her collection of stuff in front of Jamie.

“Hello,” Jamie replied, wearing the calm but amiable expression that Michael had taken to calling his ‘horse whisperer smile’. It was usually fake – of course it was, no one could be a Zen master 24/7 – but this time it was genuine: the flustered girl before him was adorable. Her shirt would have been figure-hugging if she hadn’t been so thin, and her red trousers were really tight. Her sharp, asymmetrical synth fringe made for a poignant contrast to her childishly rounded face, and her obvious nervousness awakened Jamie’s paternal instincts.

Paternal… Heh. He was thirty years old. His sister had married and given birth to a daughter six months ago, and here he was, spending all his time on the road or in the studio. But he didn’t want children, never had. So what was this twinge in his chest when he looked at the girl on the other side of the table?

“What’s your name, then?”

“Uh, Carla,” came the stumbling answer. She pushed ineffectually at her fringe and looked over her shoulder at the impatient queue behind her.

“Alright, Carla. You want me to–”

“You were amazing. I’m your biggest fan ever.”

Jamie couldn’t stop a chuckle, but he managed to make it affectionate rather than amused. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“I’m here with my mum,” Carla went on. “She used to play your music all the time when I was little.”

Jamie smiled at the girl. She looked to be around fifteen. If her mother had been a fan since the start, Carla would have been raised on Pax’s music since she was four. Child abuse, or the greatest gift a parent could give? Only time and maybe a therapist would tell.

Jamie reached for the pile of albums – CD’s, he noted with a barely suppressed twitch of the nostril – and struggled to pull out the leaflet so he could sign it. “It’s for you?”

“No – well, yes – I mean…” Carla laughed nervously and pushed her fringe out of her face. It immediately fell back over her eyes – lined with black, Jamie noticed. He fought an urge to ask what a synth fan was doing at a prog concert. Maybe Carla’s taste in music was more eclectic than her wardrobe.

“Yes,” Carla finally conceded. “It’s for me. But not just for me… Could you write another name as well?”

“Of course.” Jamie waited, eyes on her, hand ready with the pen.

“Uh,” Carla stalled, looking over her shoulder again. Then she leaned forward over the table. “Could you write, ‘To Carla and Leslie’?”

“Absolutely,” Jamie smiled. “Is he your boyfriend?”

Carla faltered. Her eyes filled a little and she hunched her shoulders, as if she was afraid to be heard in the hubbub. “No,” she whispered, and her eyes locked with Jamie’s.

Heart wrenching in his chest, Jamie breathed in to say something. It happened, now and again. It could strike at any moment. Suddenly, out of the blue, one of them appeared in the crowd, and they were always, always desperate. Every time, they reached out like this, as if clutching at the last straw, and Jamie never knew what to say.

“I see,” he croaked, and still the pen in his hand hadn’t touched paper. Then he gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile, but Carla swallowed hard, still looking at him, waiting for something more. “I’m… glad,” he added stupidly. “I mean… good for you.”

Idiotic. Worthless. Why couldn’t he just think something up in the privacy of a hotel room so that he had something intelligent to say next time? Because there was always a next time, only it came just when Jamie had managed to forget the last one.

Breaking eye contact, he printed the letters one by one: To Carla and Leslie, love Jamie xxx. He hesitated, the nib a fraction of an inch from the CD leaflet. Hang in there, he added, but felt a blush consume him as he read the stupid words. They were in ink and couldn’t be erased, and he didn’t want to ruin the girl’s CD by scratching it out. It was there now, in navy blue on the golden beige and green cover of Endless Summer: Hang in there. As if he had the right. As if he didn’t know.

He handed the CD back and picked up the next one. Carla held Endless Summer in hands that seemed to be trembling, reading Jamie’s pointless little message – over and over again, as it seemed. Jamie concentrated on signing the rest of her things, but felt Carla’s eyes on him.

Judging?

Begging?

What?

He looked up again. Carla’s face was red, but she didn’t look angry or devastated or any of the things Jamie was dreading. “You’re coming to my school, aren’t you?”

“Oh… which school is that?” Evan had indeed fixed him and Michael up with a tour of quite a different sort, and at Jamie’s entreaty, too. He just wasn’t sure where exactly they were booked.

“Saint Mary’s. The principal announced it.”

“Well, then we’ll be seeing each other again,” Jamie smiled, but Carla shook her head.

“I’m in eighth grade. You’re speaking to the ninth-graders, aren’t you? But I was just wondering…” She stopped to swallow again, and looked down at the CD in her hands as if to draw strength from it. “Could you… I mean, Miss Wetherell said that you were going to talk about drugs and stuff, but… they’re already wondering about it. The others. Other kids. Making jokes, and… So, I mean, will you…?”

Jamie knew what Carla meant. It was obvious: an out and proud couple, giving a talk at a school? It would be the only thing on those kids’ minds.

“I’m not sure yet,” he said truthfully. He and Michael hadn’t really discussed it. In fact, Michael had given him the silent treatment for days after the decision, and when he’d started acting like himself again, Jamie hadn’t dared upset the fragile status quo by bringing it up.

Hesitating, he threw a look to his left. Michael was laughing and chatting with a tall man clad entirely in black, turning a cassette tape over and over in his hands. Jamie was temporarily distracted by it. Another young hopeful who wanted them to listen to his demo?

Shaking off the thought, he sought Michael’s eyes. As usual, Michael immediately sensed it, even though he was half turned away. Meeting Jamie’s gaze, he raised his eyebrows. His flushed cheeks made his irises glitter, and Jamie’s heart pulsed softly. He’d always known he was the monogamous type, but damn. He could still be completely thrown by Michael’s air of faery-like innocence. His stage persona wasn’t an act. He really was a changeling from the spirit world.

“What?” Michael laughed.

“Nothing.” Jamie shook his head. He didn’t even remember what he’d wanted to ask. Turning back to Carla, he handed her the last of the signed CD’s. “Thank you for your support,” he said mechanically, and not until Carla moved away with a vaguely disappointed look on her face did Jamie remember the question she hadn’t quite asked: Will you be talking about your relationship with the eighth-graders, or will it all be about the dangers of drugs? Breathing in to call her back, Jamie was interrupted by the next person in line.

“Please tell me you’re not packing it in!”

Startled, he looked up at the woman who was all but wringing her hands. “Uh… packing it in?”

“Rolling Stone is saying that this was your last tour.” Clear green eyes blinked away tears, and behind her, other fans pricked their ears lest they miss any news.

“No, no,” Jamie held up his hands. “We’re not breaking up, if that’s what you mean.”

The woman relaxed a little, but she still looked wary as she unfolded a giant poster for Jamie to sign. “You’re quite sure?” she asked.

“Quite sure,” Jamie chuckled. “We haven’t done half the damage we want to.” He glanced at Michael again. He was still talking to the dark rocker, who was gesticulating eagerly at the cassette and explaining something that had Michael spellbound. Grinning, Jamie helped the woman smooth out the poster and reached for a silver pen. “Michael over there is a Duracell Bunny,” he said. “He won’t ever stop, unless he hits an actual brick wall. He lives and breathes music.”

As Jamie started writing, the woman leaned closer. “Yes, but what about them?” Her head jerked subtly, and Jamie looked to his right. Becca and Cal were both smiling and signing things like always, but he could see lines of weariness around Cal’s mouth, and Becca’s eyes were too bright, like they were when she was trying to suppress yawns. Yes, their bassist and drummer needed some time off, that was evident. Maybe this hiatus would have to be a bit longer than two weeks. And Jamie had no trouble envisioning a couple of months on a beach somewhere, or even at home, in the sofa, watching TV.

But who would be the brave soul to tell Michael?

Before he had the chance to mull over it, there was a screech from the door, and a couple of people burst in, brandishing hand-written signs and fists. “You’re all doomed!”

She had a sharp chin and blue eyes that seemed too big for her face. Jamie caught himself wondering how there was room for a brain with eyes that big.

“How can you let children attend?”

Jamie frowned. “Children? You mean…?”

“The concert! You sing about filthy things – perverted sex and war and God knows what – and you let children come and listen.”

Jamie looked around. There were a few teenagers, but no really small ones tonight. There usually were a few under the age of ten, though. Fanatical parents, determined to pass their passions on to their offspring, went by the adage the sooner the better.

“Don’t think calling your guards will help you,” the woman sneered.

“I was looking f–”

“I’m not interested.” The woman moved closer and leaned over the table, jutting out her chin. “I’m only interested in getting you to understand.”

“What exactly do you want me to understand? That we’re not a children’s band? I know. We’re not targeting children.”

An expression of disgust passed over the woman’s face. “Funny you should use that phrase.”

“What? Why?” Jamie was beginning to feel uneasy. Maybe he should call the guard after all.

“You’re perverts, aren’t you?”

Jamie breathed in to reply, but even though he’d got the question often enough, he still didn’t know what to answer. I must be really wrung out, he thought. Can’t even string together a coherent sentence to shut up a pitchfork wielder.

Apparently, his failure to give a quick reply made the woman decide something. Straightening up, she threw a look over her shoulder, and Jamie had the time to notice a black leather jacket and a row of ring-glittering knuckles before his autopilot slammed the eject button and the word ”Guards!” shot out of his mouth.

Their reaction was instantaneous. As Jamie got to his feet and stumbled on the chair to get away, the guard named Lenny threw himself in front of the table, weapon drawn. A loud, dry crack echoed through the room and Jamie felt something graze his hand. He yanked it back and gripped Michael’s shoulder just as he was getting up from his chair. The other guard had knocked the weapon out of the attacker’s hand, and the woman was yelling something. Jamie dragged Michael with him to the floor and tried to drag him away as he crawled towards the door.

“You’re all going to burn,” the woman screamed. “All of you!”

Cutting Edge (Pax #4)

61000 / 75000 words. 81% done!

The stage hand glanced at Jamie and laid his hand on the door handle. Ready?

Jamie looked around at his little band family, eyebrows raised in question. Becca gave a slight nod. Cal’s lips pressed together. Michael tried to look unaffected, but when Jamie’s eyes met his, a broad grin brightened his face. Unable to keep from smiling back, Jamie tore his eyes away and gave a nod of confirmation to the stage hand.

The whole process took less than three seconds. Then the door opened, and Pax went out into the roar of the post-show meet and greet.

By now, the flurry of fans descending on them felt familiar and safe. Years of touring, interviews, photos and autographs had accustomed them to being at the centre of attention at all times. In the beginning, back when Pax really took off in the late seventies, Jamie had struggled with it for a while. Burned by the betrayal of Adam the photographer and the crazy Swedish fan, he’d been expecting tragedy at every corner. But now, nine years down the road, the bustle of signing records and pictures and bootlegs and body parts had become humdrum. Sometimes it was even boring.

Not so today. They’d just finished a major UK tour, and fans were delirious with equal parts joy and despair. As Pax took their seats at the two tables, laden with sparkling water and a barrage of multi-coloured pens, Jamie smiled at the agitation that rippled through the queue. People were wild-eyed, clutching precious mementoes to be offered like sacrifices to the gods of prog rock. It was a miracle they all stayed in line – a virtue as British as they came, and one to be truly grateful for.

“Hello,” an out-of-breath teenager said, half dropping, half pushing her collection of stuff in front of Jamie.

“Hello,” Jamie replied, wearing the calm but amiable expression that Michael had taken to calling his ‘horse whisperer smile’. It was usually fake – of course it was, no one could be a Zen master 24/7 – but this time it was genuine: the flustered girl before him was adorable. Her shirt would have been figure-hugging if she hadn’t been so thin, and her red trousers were really tight. Her sharp, asymmetrical synth fringe made for a poignant contrast to her childishly rounded face, and her obvious nervousness awakened Jamie’s paternal instincts.

Paternal… Heh. He was thirty years old. His sister had married and given birth to a daughter six months ago, and here he was, spending all his time on the road or in the studio. But he didn’t want children, never had. So what was this twinge in his chest when he looked at the girl on the other side of the table?

“What’s your name, then?”

“Uh, Carla,” came the stumbling answer. She pushed ineffectually at her fringe and looked over her shoulder at the impatient queue behind her.

“Alright, Carla. You want me to–”

“You were amazing. I’m your biggest fan ever.”

Jamie couldn’t stop a chuckle, but he managed to make it affectionate rather than amused. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“I’m here with my mum,” Carla went on. “She used to play your music all the time when I was little.”

Jamie smiled at the girl. She looked to be around fifteen. If her mother had been a fan since the start, Carla would have been raised on Pax’s music since she was four. Child abuse, or the greatest gift a parent could give? Only time and maybe a therapist would tell.

Jamie reached for the pile of albums – CD’s, he noted with a barely suppressed twitch of the nostril – and struggled to pull out the leaflet so he could sign it. “It’s for you?”

“No – well, yes – I mean…” Carla laughed nervously and pushed her fringe out of her face. It immediately fell back over her eyes – lined with black, Jamie noticed. He fought an urge to ask what a synth fan was doing at a prog concert. Maybe Carla’s taste in music was more eclectic than her wardrobe.

“Yes,” Carla finally conceded. “It’s for me. But not just for me… Could you write another name as well?”

“Of course.” Jamie waited, eyes on her, hand ready with the pen.

“Uh,” Carla stalled, looking over her shoulder again. Then she leaned forward over the table. “Could you write, ‘To Carla and Leslie’?”

“Absolutely,” Jamie smiled. “Is he your boyfriend?”

Carla faltered. Her eyes filled a little and she hunched her shoulders, as if she was afraid to be heard in the hubbub. “No,” she whispered, and her eyes locked with Jamie’s.

Heart wrenching in his chest, Jamie breathed in to say something. It happened, now and again. It could strike at any moment. Suddenly, out of the blue, one of them appeared in the crowd, and they were always, always desperate. Every time, they reached out like this, as if clutching at the last straw, and Jamie never knew what to say.

“I see,” he croaked, and still the pen in his hand hadn’t touched paper. Then he gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile, but Carla swallowed hard, still looking at him, waiting for something more. “I’m… glad,” he added stupidly. “I mean… good for you.”

Idiotic. Worthless. Why couldn’t he just think something up in the privacy of a hotel room so that he had something intelligent to say next time? Because there was always a next time, only it came just when Jamie had managed to forget the last one.

Breaking eye contact, he printed the letters one by one: To Carla and Leslie, love Jamie xxx. He hesitated, the nib a fraction of an inch from the CD leaflet. Hang in there, he added, but felt a blush consume him as he read the stupid words. They were in ink and couldn’t be erased, and he didn’t want to ruin the girl’s CD by scratching it out. It was there now, in navy blue on the golden beige and green cover of Endless Summer: Hang in there. As if he had the right. As if he didn’t know.

He handed the CD back and picked up the next one. Carla held Endless Summer in hands that seemed to be trembling, reading Jamie’s pointless little message – over and over again, as it seemed. Jamie concentrated on signing the rest of her things, but felt Carla’s eyes on him.

Judging?

Begging?

What?

He looked up again. Carla’s face was red, but she didn’t look angry or devastated or any of the things Jamie was dreading. “You’re coming to my school, aren’t you?”

“Oh… which school is that?” Evan had indeed fixed him and Michael up with a tour of quite a different sort, and at Jamie’s entreaty, too. He just wasn’t sure where exactly they were booked.

“Saint Mary’s. The principal announced it.”

“Well, then we’ll be seeing each other again,” Jamie smiled, but Carla shook her head.

“I’m in eighth grade. You’re speaking to the ninth-graders, aren’t you? But I was just wondering…” She stopped to swallow again, and looked down at the CD in her hands as if to draw strength from it. “Could you… I mean, Miss Wetherell said that you were going to talk about drugs and stuff, but… they’re already wondering about it. The others. Other kids. Making jokes, and… So, I mean, will you…?”

Jamie knew what Carla meant. It was obvious: an out and proud couple, giving a talk at a school? It would be the only thing on those kids’ minds.

“I’m not sure yet,” he said truthfully. He and Michael hadn’t really discussed it. In fact, Michael had given him the silent treatment for days after the decision, and when he’d started acting like himself again, Jamie hadn’t dared upset the fragile status quo by bringing it up.

Hesitating, he threw a look to his left. Michael was laughing and chatting with a tall man clad entirely in black, turning a cassette tape over and over in his hands. Jamie was temporarily distracted by it. Another young hopeful who wanted them to listen to his demo?

Shaking off the thought, he sought Michael’s eyes. As usual, Michael immediately sensed it, even though he was half turned away. Meeting Jamie’s gaze, he raised his eyebrows. His flushed cheeks made his irises glitter, and Jamie’s heart pulsed softly. He’d always known he was the monogamous type, but damn. He could still be completely thrown by Michael’s air of faery-like innocence. His stage persona wasn’t an act. He really was a changeling from the spirit world.

“What?” Michael laughed.

“Nothing.” Jamie shook his head. He didn’t even remember what he’d wanted to ask. Turning back to Carla, he handed her the last of the signed CD’s. “Thank you for your support,” he said mechanically, and not until Carla moved away with a vaguely disappointed look on her face did Jamie remember the question she hadn’t quite asked: Will you be talking about your relationship with the eighth-graders, or will it all be about the dangers of drugs? Breathing in to call her back, Jamie was interrupted by the next person in line.

“Please tell me you’re not packing it in!”

Startled, he looked up at the woman who was all but wringing her hands. “Uh… packing it in?”

“Rolling Stone is saying that this was your last tour.” Clear green eyes blinked away tears, and behind her, other fans pricked their ears lest they miss any news.

“No, no,” Jamie held up his hands. “We’re not breaking up, if that’s what you mean.”

The woman relaxed a little, but she still looked wary as she unfolded a giant poster for Jamie to sign. “You’re quite sure?” she asked.

“Quite sure,” Jamie chuckled. “We haven’t done half the damage we want to.” He glanced at Michael again. He was still talking to the dark rocker, who was gesticulating eagerly at the cassette and explaining something that had Michael spellbound. Grinning, Jamie helped the woman smooth out the poster and reached for a silver pen. “Michael over there is a Duracell Bunny,” he said. “He won’t ever stop, unless he hits an actual brick wall. He lives and breathes music.”

As Jamie started writing, the woman leaned closer. “Yes, but what about them?” Her head jerked subtly, and Jamie looked to his right. Becca and Cal were both smiling and signing things like always, but he could see lines of weariness around Cal’s mouth, and Becca’s eyes were too bright, like they were when she was trying to suppress yawns. Yes, their bassist and drummer needed some time off, that was evident. Maybe this hiatus would have to be a bit longer than two weeks. And Jamie had no trouble envisioning a couple of months on a beach somewhere, or even at home, in the sofa, watching TV.

But who would be the brave soul to tell Michael?

Before he had the chance to mull over it, there was a screech from the door, and a couple of people burst in, brandishing hand-written signs and fists. “You’re all doomed!”

She had a sharp chin and blue eyes that seemed too big for her face. Jamie caught himself wondering how there was room for a brain with eyes that big.

“How can you let children attend?”

Jamie frowned. “Children? You mean…?”

“The concert! You sing about filthy things – perverted sex and war and God knows what – and you let children come and listen.”

Jamie looked around. There were a few teenagers, but no really small ones tonight. There usually were a few under the age of ten, though. Fanatical parents, determined to pass their passions on to their offspring, went by the adage the sooner the better.

“Don’t think calling your guards will help you,” the woman sneered.

“I was looking f–”

“I’m not interested.” The woman moved closer and leaned over the table, jutting out her chin. “I’m only interested in getting you to understand.”

“What exactly do you want me to understand? That we’re not a children’s band? I know. We’re not targeting children.”

An expression of disgust passed over the woman’s face. “Funny you should use that phrase.”

“What? Why?” Jamie was beginning to feel uneasy. Maybe he should call the guard after all.

“You’re perverts, aren’t you?”

Jamie breathed in to reply, but even though he’d got the question often enough, he still didn’t know what to answer. I must be really wrung out, he thought. Can’t even string together a coherent sentence to shut up a pitchfork wielder.

Apparently, his failure to give a quick reply made the woman decide something. Straightening up, she threw a look over her shoulder, and Jamie had the time to notice a black leather jacket and a row of ring-glittering knuckles before his autopilot slammed the eject button and the word ”Guards!” shot out of his mouth.

Their reaction was instantaneous. As Jamie got to his feet and stumbled on the chair to get away, the guard named Lenny threw himself in front of the table, weapon drawn. A loud, dry crack echoed through the room and Jamie felt something graze his hand. He yanked it back and gripped Michael’s shoulder just as he was getting up from his chair. The other guard had knocked the weapon out of the attacker’s hand, and the woman was yelling something. Jamie dragged Michael with him to the floor and tried to drag him away as he crawled towards the door.

“You’re all going to burn,” the woman screamed. “All of you!”

As You Like It: the fulfilment of a promise

In Rival Poet, Will makes a solemn promise to Kit that he will show two men dressed as men kissing on the English stage before he dies. In the first version of the novel, I showed him making good on that promise, but those scenes were ultimately cut, along with many others. However, while they didn’t fit into the finished book, I was loath to part with them, and they’ve been lurking in a folder marked ‘Old’ since then.

And now the time has come to share.

 ***

Even before he opened his eyes, he knew what day it was. The 30th of May, 1603. Ten years to the day. A brand new morning in a brand new world. Nothing special.

He sat up. Last night’s beer still stuck to the back of his throat. Swallowing drily, he walked to the window, opened the shutters and looked out at the world, basking in the light of a hot spring sun and a new generation of writers. Young, hungry poets like Dekker and Heywood and Fletcher were swiftly taking the place of Nashe, Marlowe and Watson. Some wunderkind named Webster was poking his pug nose into everyone’s business, getting his speeches included in all sorts of plays. Thinks he can bombast out a blank verse with the best of us… Will smiled wryly. Was he part of the establishment now, that he resented the new upstart crows flying in from the country?

Well, so be it, then. Why fight it? It was sad to see the old world disintegrate before his very eyes. A new age was dawning, and Will was just about the only one of the old bunch who was still alive. Tom, Robert, George – they were all dead and buried. And soon Will, too, would be swept to his tomb and there would be nothing left of what he once accomplished but a few forgotten pages fluttering around the Globe.

Shaking his head, he ran his fingers through his hair. He was on a one-way trip towards death, but he still had several years left of the twenty-three he’d promised Richard. Until the day came when he was free to go, he had to step up if he wasn’t to be eclipsed. The new lads were eager and full of confidence, imagining themselves the proper chroniclers of James’s illustrious new reign, while Will was just a sad old relic from the age of Elizabeth.

Yes. She was dead. For more than two months now, the country had been in a state of suspended animation, beheaded and monarchless, flapping around but losing speed fast. The first news had sent London into temporary insanity, spurred on by the ringing bells: Queen Elizabeth was dead! James of Scotland was to be crowned King! People swarmed out of their houses to gape at the town-criers and gossip each other into a state of mindless euphoria.

The grey March skies had done nothing to dampen their spirits. The Queen’s death was fantastic news. She was the discarded carcass of a grilled sparrow, and all the people who had sworn solemn oaths of loyalty were suddenly giddy with expectation now that a new sovereign was in the pipeline. The government officials tied themselves in knots to prepare for the royal entry, gathering their troops from all layers of society, only to be stopped in their tracks by the plague.

It had been like running into a wall. Suddenly all that energy had fizzled out and people had been left glancing around them in confusion, unsure of what to do, where to go, even what to say. Postponing the royal entry, the big men had left for their country estates to wait it out, and the dregs had stayed in the city, resigned as usual to their quiet panic and superstition. Even the spring itself had seemed to hesitate as the weeks passed without so much as a glimpse of the new king.

But the plague would end eventually. It always ended. And when it did, Will must be first in line to praise the arriving monarch with bustling entertainment, to cater to the public’s reawakened enthusiasm with a topical play.

So what do people want nowadays? he asked himself as he descended the stairs and made for the thinning book market by St Paul’s. Marriages and happy ever after?

The flair for pastorals was surely coming to an end by now, otherwise that might have created the right atmosphere. On the other hand, he was hopelessly outdated anyway. Why not go for a pastoral? Maybe people would appreciate the safe embrace of nostalgia when the miasma finally lifted? Perhaps he could even revive that silly old fairy tale – what had he called it? Love’s Labour’s Lost. No, that was something else. Love’s Labour’s Won. That was it. Silly title, he’d soon changed it.

But that hadn’t saved it, because the story didn’t work either. The play had had its scattering of performances, but interest had soon dwindled. Some pirate had tried to milk it for a few drops more by submitting it for printing, but Will had stopped it in time. Not that he should mind an inferior talent getting his reputation marred by a stolen, subpar comedy, but he was loath to abandon anything: maybe one day he could mend it. If his father’s business had taught him anything, it was to save all scraps, to economise. Patch it up and call it something else. If the skin is too small to make a glove, then make a purse.

And Love’s Labour’s Won was a prime candidate.

He knew what the trouble was, too. It was Rosalind. She was just such an airhead, such a simpering, stupid girl, and he had no idea how to make her interesting.

He reached the book market and ambled along the stalls, listlessly picking up a volume here and there, remembering how he’d once lighted on Romeus. But now everything on sale looked boring. They still pandered Robert’s old rant, trying to scrounge a few extra coins out of his dead carcass.

Will sighed and strolled on. Mustn’t think of that now. Must concentrate on the play. Must create new parts and discard all the old ones: Puck, Mercutio, Richard II, Arthur, Poins… all the various shadows that had paraded over the stage, showing Kit in all his different guises. Mischief maker, wildcat, broken king, helpless boy, tempter…

He shook his head, trying to clear it. So. Rosalind. Off to the forest of Arden. Lovey dovey. Fine.

No. Not fine. He threw down an amateurish pamphlet in disgust. She couldn’t travel alone into the woods. She would be raped, mugged, murdered. He rubbed his forehead. So, another girl in disguise? Well, why not? People seemed to enjoy it, and it solved a lot of problems. Besides, he could relate. He had lived with a disguise practically his whole life.

Staring up at the crows circling the shingle roof of St Paul’s, he forced himself to keep thinking creatively. He needed two girls. One dressed as a boy, then, and one as a… shepherdess.

No. No shepherds.

He laughed suddenly. No shepherds in a pastoral?

A shepherdess, then. Kit would have liked that. A memory surfaced unbidden – him and Kit in bed, just talking, fully clothed and still, somehow, making love.

Something rose in Will’s throat. I’m not going to cry. It’s just a date. A number. Thirty.

The age he never reached.

He clenched his eyes shut. The scene in his head refused to dissipate. He even heard voices now, murmuring laughter and repartee. He’d promised Kit to show two boys kissing in a play, and Kit had scoffed and told him it would never happen.

A shiver ran down Will’s back. Rosalind. The missing link. The boy as girl as boy… She was the key.

He opened his eyes and stared at the books on the table without seeing them. Rosalind in boys’ clothes… but this time, he wouldn’t stop there. People had come to expect funny situations arising from mistaken identities, but what if he showed them what could really happen? What if Rosalind went further than anybody else? If she was caught up in her disguise, even worse than Viola, if she actually decided to court Orlando, because she had no way of revealing her true identity but still had to be with him?

It might just work. It might. But how to make Orlando play along in a way that the audience would accept? Maybe by having him know that the masculine disguise concealed his one true love. But then the whole point of the play would disappear. Something else then. Maybe he could pretend?

Yes. He could pretend. Orlando was pining for his Rosalind so much that he didn’t care that it wasn’t her. He just closed his eyes and embraced what he thought was a boy, and thought of her. Made himself believe.

It wasn’t unthinkable. Will remembered the young men he had followed into dark alleys during the years following Kit’s death. They had all worn his face. And even as Will’s chest ached with ancient grief, he knew now that he must do it, must see it through. This was the answer to the promise he had made more than ten years ago.

 ***

 “You need a break from that.”

Richard had approached soundlessly through the leaf-fall. Now he stood, hands at his sides, trying for the commanding stance that worked so well on a stage. In real life, it was nothing short of ridiculous.

Without even looking up from the sketches of Troilus, Will just muttered a faint “Hm?”

But Richard was not to be put off by his friend’s determined melancholy. He sat down beside him on the lawn and attempted conversation. “Pastoral going well?”

Will made a face. “With these surroundings? Splendid.”

Richard chuckled. They were staying at Augustine’s mist-shrouded house in the aptly named Mortlake. The word had an ominous ring to it, as if the very clouds hovering over the water were a pestilent fume, and yet they spent the autumn here to avoid the plague. So far it had worked. “At least it’s doing Augustine good.”

Will averted his eyes and tried not to think about the way their friend’s health seemed to be silently deteriorating. He never complained, and never hinted at the truth, but something was eating away at their second-in-command – something more than the recent death of his son. As if the grief had turned into an ague and was devouring him from inside, and his friends would one day find him an empty husk. But the seasoned actor soldiered on, refusing to give in, even though the October cold seemed to have settled in his bones, making his movements slow and laboured.

“The body can only live so long without a soul to animate it,” Will muttered, but Richard chose to misunderstand.

“Yes… You know, I actually thought Gloriana would live forever. That ‘Beauty’s Rose’ would never die.” He winked at Will, who acknowledged the quote with a weary grimace. He knew that this was just a preamble to something else, that Richard was angling the stream with seeming disinterest, only to hook the trout with one decisive flick of the wrist as soon as its attention had been caught. Will knew his methods, but was too tired to resist them.

“Well, it just goes to show…” he began, but fell silent, unsure of what it went to show. That even monarchs were mortal? That God was finally fed up with having a spinster on the throne? That even Protestantism couldn’t save you? He snorted and flicked a spider from his hose. “It’s hilarious how everyone thinks everything will be better now, just because he’s on the throne. The mob is a fickle creature.”

Richard looked at him sideways. “You sound as if you miss the old bitch.”

Not her. Just her time. “She had her moments.”

“It’s time for a change.”

Will scowled. “I’m too old for changes.”

In truth, he was only thirty-nine years old, not exactly what you’d call ancient. But maybe it had nothing to do with actual years, and more with fighting. He was tired of fighting, in body and spirit. He had spent his life shadowboxing an imagined foe, and the minute he realised that she was not in fact the enemy, she died and someone new took her place. A new joker, a wild card, an unknown entity. Was Will supposed to use the rest of his years in pursuit of his secrets, probing his depths, straining at the borders of his patience, testing his waters? For what?

No, he had no welcome for the new king, the strange northerner whom everyone described as debauched and appallingly ugly.

“It’s a new start,” Richard said, determined to be positive. “We all need it.”

“New…” Will grimaced to himself. Such a simple word. One syllable, three letters. But it summed up his entire career: new. That was what he dealt in, that was his true trade: the new. Something new every week, if not by his quill then by somebody else’s. New, new, new. It didn’t matter that the stories they churned out had been told countless times before, as long as there was a new title and a new twist to the plot.

Well, there was only so much newness in him. At some point it had to stop. He had to stop. Maybe that was why he felt so old. Everything new had been taken out of him.

“At least he’s a man,” Richard shrugged, as if that were an unassailable advantage.

“Don’t be so sure,” Will smiled wearily. “I’m not even convinced she was a woman.”

“All monarchs are of an undecided sex. Just like Rosalind.” Richard’s voice was light, but Will felt his scalp cover in hot prickles at the thinly veiled hint. His friend had read the drafts and had seen right through him as usual.

“Well, even Christopher grows older,” Will defended himself.

“So put him in breeches for the whole play?” Richard asked, eyebrow pointedly raised.

Will avoided his gaze. “It’s one solution.” But beneath the banter, Will knew that Rosalind was shaping up to be the truest woman and man he had ever written. As if Kit and his sister Annie had joined forces. A tomboy and a half-man, combined to make the perfect human being.

“You need inspiration,” Richard said, and his tone indicated that he was finally nearing his true motive for seeking Will out on this foggy day.

“Like what?” Will humoured him.

“Like new acquaintances.”

Will groaned and put his quill back in the inkpot, which balanced precariously on the uneven lawn. He stretched his creaking fingers, numb with cold and damp. “Isn’t one of the reasons we’re here that we don’t want to meet any people?” he muttered. “Remember, people have the plague.”

“Not this one. He lives down the road.”

“Still.”

He felt exceedingly churlish, and he had no wish to meet anyone. He enjoyed being on his own, alone with his thoughts, with his depressive plots. Between making additions to the light-hearted pastoral, he succumbed to the darkest impulses in his writer’s psyche, channelling faithless women, deceiving villains, corrupt rulers and ungrateful children. The bleak surroundings were actually helping.

The others – actors at heart but without anything to act in – were quietly going crazy. But why they wanted Will to be a part of their desperate search for entertainment was beyond him.

To deflect Richard’s invitation he tried for an unassailable argument. “You do want me to work, don’t you?”

Richard made an impatient noise. “Yes, but work smart, not hard.”

Will looked at him, amused despite himself. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re twice as intelligent as everyone else. You only need to work half as much to reach as far as they do.”

Will shook his head, immune to Richard’s flattery. “Which means that if I work as hard as everyone else, I’ll reach twice as far?”

“Well…”

“And if I work twice as hard, well…”

Richard shrugged moodily. “So we’ll be the only ones to know, then.”

With that lugubrious remark, he rose to leave. Will could tell that he expected to be called back. Closing his eyes and leaning back on the trunk behind him, he debated with himself. Despite everything, curiosity got the better of him, just as Richard knew it would. So there was some life left in him, then, that he could feel his mind quicken at the promise of a puzzle?

“What?” he murmured, the question mark a mere wisp.

He could almost hear Richard smile as he turned back. “We’re going to have our futures told.”

Will made a face. “Futures.”

“Yes. You do still have a future, you know.”

“And you’ve located a fortune teller in this ghost town?”

Richard laughed, the secret adventure a glittering gem behind his eyes, sparkling with mischief. “Yes. One that Elizabeth herself consulted.”

Startled, Will looked up. He couldn’t possibly mean…? But Richard nodded in answer to the unspoken question.

“Oh…”

And just like that, Richard flicked his wrist and the trout was caught.

***

It had been Jack’s idea, of course, being the youngest at heart. When he had learned that Doctor Dee, the famous court astrologer, lived close by, he had gone into a childish craze, demanding that Augustine introduce them. Augustine had been understandably reluctant, but under the untiring onslaught of his friend he soon confessed that they were indeed briefly acquainted. He had tried to argue that the poor old man probably wanted to be left alone, but Jack made a convincing case for the contrary, claiming that Elizabeth’s death had not been good for him. Banished from court because King James tended to get nervous around practitioners of the occult, Doctor Dee had no steady source of income to support his property in Mortlake, and was naturally on the look-out for new customers.

It had been impossible to resist, even for someone as stubborn as Augustine, and now that the rendezvous was arranged and the four friends were shown into Doctor Dee’s parlour, Jack was giddy like a child.

“Welcome,” the ageing occultist greeted them and shook all their hands. His voice was deep but soft, and despite his flowing robes and long beard, he looked decidedly non-mysterious. He did have a curious little hat on his head with symbols that Will had never seen, but his eyes twinkled good-naturedly amid a matrix of fine lines. “Tea?”

“Do w-we dare?” Jack giggled excitedly, but received the cup without qualms.

“So, you boys want your horoscopes cast, then?”

His guests exchanged glances. Their host didn’t exactly beat around the bush.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you want to chit-chat for a while?” Doctor Dee shook his head in amusement. “Better not. I’m an old man. I might die before we get to the important part.”

“Surely–” Augustine began his polite objection, but Doctor Dee waved him off.

“I have no trouble accepting my imminent death.”

They stared at him in confusion, and he laughed.

“Don’t worry. I’ll survive the evening. I still have a few years left, thanks to this place. So…” He slapped his knees in an age-old gesture of getting down to business. “Who’s first?”

Despite his earlier enthusiasm, Jack suddenly seemed reluctant to pioneer. Glancing amongst themselves, the four men hesitated. Doctor Dee waited, and then he scanned the small group until his eyes snagged on Will. “Shall we?”

Will rose on shaky legs, disconcerted at having been singled out. He followed his host into another room, a small one with only two chairs and a rickety table, covered with a few nameless instruments. Around the walls, there were a few bookshelves, but not as many as Will would have expected of such a learned man.

“Oh, yes,” Doctor Dee said, seeing him look. “I was robbed.” He breathed in as if to continue, but fell silent, suddenly looking very tired. Will wondered if he should offer his condolences, or ask for details, but he had the feeling that Dee didn’t wish to talk about it, so he said nothing.

A moment passed, and then the old man rallied. “So, this session… I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed. Or shocked. You see, I only tell the truth, and some people can’t handle that. Can you?”

Will swallowed, remembering Aunt Joan and her reading of his hand. But she had known him, inside and out. They were related. This man was a complete stranger. He couldn’t possibly know anything. Unless…

Will cleared his throat nervously, eyes darting around the room, half expecting the devil to appear, Faustus fashion, from a trapdoor in the floor. “You sure this is quite…?”

Doctor Dee smiled faintly. “… kosher?”

Will frowned at the unknown word.

“Consistent with our faith,” Doctor Dee clarified with a small grimace, as if sharing a joke with himself.

“Our faith?” Will repeated.

Doctor Dee quirked an eyebrow. “You’re wondering which one I’m alluding to.”

Will felt himself colour.

“Well,” Doctor Dee sighed, the slightest tinge of impatience in his voice. “You’ll be happy to know that whichever seems pertinent to you, I endorse it.”

“You…?” Will began, but fell silent, unsure of what to say.

“Protestant, Catholic,” Doctor Dee shrugged. “It’s all one. The angels don’t care. It’s all just framework, you see? Function and form. A soul doesn’t change because of language, or because of a building. If you’re searching for Truth, it’s in here.” He prodded at Will’s chest with his index finger, and Will’s eyes caught the meshwork of veins that covered the back of his hand. Like tiny creeks, all combining to make one big river.

He shivered. This place was getting to him. “But… predicting the future,” he swallowed. “Does God really want us to know?”

There was the slightest hint of a smile on Doctor Dee’s face. “If He doesn’t, why did He create the stars?” He fiddled with a strange-looking instrument and then picked up a quill and a piece of paper. “Date and time of birth, please?”

Will wanted to get up and leave, but his body wouldn’t obey him. “Twenty-third of April, afternoon. Holy Trinity had just tolled three…”

Doctor Dee looked surprised at the detailed information, but then he nodded and wrote. Will wouldn’t have known about the exact time, of course, if not for Aunt Joan and her memory for details.

Retrieving a thick volume from one of the shelves, Doctor Dee consulted some kind of table, full of numbers and strange glyphs, and then wrote some more. The candles flickered over the scribbles taking shape on the paper, and Will felt sweat pearl and run down his back.

“Well, I can tell you already, there’s a clash of personalities in you. You were born under Taurus, the ox, which makes you strong-willed, purposeful and practical, but you also have a strong lunar influence…”

“… which makes me mad?” Will laughed nervously.

“Which makes you skittish. Driven by your intellect. These two extremes battle for supremacy within you. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other. There is no telling which will have the upper hand in any given situation. You may stick to a thought or an idea or a person, and the next minute you’re somewhere else in your head.”

Will baulked at the veiled accusation. “I’m not disloyal!” he burst out.

Doctor Dee was unruffled. “I didn’t say you were. Just… easily influenced. Able to pick up the thoughts and feelings of others.”

“Easily led?” Will translated, still needled.

“Empathic,” Doctor Dee corrected him.

“Wordplay.”

“At which you excel. But I’m a man of numbers.”

“Well, numbers don’t rule my life.”

“No? This year means nothing to you, then?” Doctor Dee’s eyes were deathly serious when they pinned Will to the chair, and Will felt his throat close.

“Not really,” he whispered weakly, unable to convince even himself.

Doctor Dee looked at him with something akin to sympathy. “Something must rule our lives,” he said. “So why not numbers?”

“We can rule ourselves,” Will objected, but it didn’t feel like his own words. He rather felt as if he was acting out a script written beforehand by his unsettling host.

“Yes, we have a measure of free will,” Doctor Dee agreed. “But only within very clear boundaries. As humans, we obey, we adhere to the rules of life, we eat and drink and work and sleep, otherwise we don’t last. We keep to our trade, fill our place in the Great Chain of Being. But we also fight it. Without the fight, we’d have no soul. We resist the rules, the chains, the boundaries, even as we thrive on them. The secret is in the balance. Every choice we make must restore the balance. That’s why the right choice for one day is the wrong one for the next. That’s why truths change. You understand?”

Will could do nothing but nod. Doctor Dee watched him for a while in silence, and then a thought seemed to come to him.

“Let me ask you someting. Are you content with King James’s rule?”

A cold draught seemed to sweep through the room. “Content?” Will gasped, scandalised. “He’s the King! It’s not for me to question him.”

“Of course, of course…” Doctor Dee looked away, seemingly searching for better words to convey his meaning. Clearing his throat, he conceded, “It’s not our place to question a king, you’re right. But is he really a lawful successor?”

Will felt himself go rigid. He’s as dangerous a teacher as Master Jenkins, he thought. Making me argue for the deposition of a monarch.

“I know, you’re thinking neither was Elizabeth.”

“There was no such stuff in my mind!”

Doctor Dee looked at him as a father might look at a deceiving child, giving him the opportunity to take back his lies and escape the rod. “An ambitious man such as yourself cannot choose but question authority. Don’t play games with me. I have your whole soul laid out before me right here. I can even tell you how your affair with Marlowe will end.”

Will choked on air. Staring wildly, he stuttered, “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Doctor Dee looked vaguely vexed. “This is a science, you know. Let me hazard a guess. Based on these calculations… He’s an Aquarius, isn’t he? Well, I’d say you had a very tempestuous relationship, passionate, never static. You were fated to be drawn to each other, but unable to find peace in a world which forced you to play different roles. In one sense, he was an innocent victim to the spider’s web he got tangled up in, but being such a charmer, such a… seducer…” He pursed his lips. “Someone was bound to get hurt, and when you entered the scene, stealing all of his attention…”

I was hurt under your arm. Will swallowed and swallowed, but his throat was too dry. A pair of star-crossed lovers. A man whom he had held in his heart of hearts. And Doctor Dee still referred to him in the present tense. As if he were still a part of this world.

“I’m sorry,” Doctor Dee said, shaking his head. “I’m being inconsiderate. Focusing on the negative. He does love you, after all.”

Will felt an objection quicken and die in his throat. He wanted to scream that Kit loved no one any longer, that he was decomposing in an anonymous grave in the suburbs, but he couldn’t make a sound. Maybe a mystic like Doctor Dee didn’t see death as the end. Maybe he meant that Kit’s soul still loved Will.

The thought made something break and bleed inside him.

“And he’s not the only one,” Doctor Dee went on, oblivious to his turmoil. “People actually listen to you. You can influence events, Master Shakespeare, should you choose to do so – and James has many enemies.”

Will was too conflicted to reply.

“I can imagine what you’re thinking. ‘Dee has a personal grudge. Is he trying to snare me into some scheme for his personal gain? Preying on my vulnerable mind while I’m sick with grief?’ Well, you needn’t worry. I’m resigned to my fate, and another monarch wouldn’t change anything at this late date. I’m not telling you what to do. I do believe in free will after all. I’m just warning you. Preparing you. James will be challenged. The Catholics are displeased. The novelty of coronations soon wear off. When that day comes, are you going to use your talents to support him or to weaken him?”

Will was shocked out of his ability to speak with any kind of coherence. “I… couldn’t…”

“Oh, please. You’re too old to be bashful. You have the ear of London. You can sway them either way. You’ve used it before. And believe me, something will happen, and soon. You have to know which side you’re on before the time comes for a showdown. When the Privy Council looks at your current plays, will they see unflinching royalism or subversion?”

Will sat very still, staring incredulously at the serious man before him. How did he know about Macbeth? How had this consultation got so out of hand? Why had he agreed to come? Why…?

“Why are you telling me this?” His voice was a mere whisper.

Doctor Dee’s face softened into a dazzling smile. “Because you’re such a conflicted person,” he chuckled. “Always with the choices! I’m letting you know what the important choice will be. I’m not making it for you, but I’m pointing your gaze in the right direction. All the minor decisions you make every day, I know they’re taking their toll, but at the end of the day they’re not that important. This one is.”

“Are you in league with Poley?” Will blurted, and this made the astrologer burst into boisterous laughter which echoed disrespectfully between the stone walls, shaking the dust from the musty books.

“No,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I’m too disgraced to be in league with anybody anymore, and that lunatic would be the last man on my list.”

When his mirth died down, the two men sat in silence for a while, Will battling demons of all kinds and Doctor Dee smiling, patiently waiting for his guest to come to some sort of checkmate with himself.

Finally, Will managed an unfinished question. “What will happen, you know, if I…?”

Doctor Dee’s face darkened. “I don’t want to sway you.”

“But you said something would happen. What did you mean?”

Doctor Dee grimaced, obviously regretting having revealed too much. “The usual,” he muttered between clenched teeth. “Disgruntled nobles trying for a coup.”

Will frowned, remembering the failed attempt at Elizabeth’s throne two years back. “’Trying’.”

“Yes.” Doctor Dee’s face was impassive, refusing to reveal the outcome of the anticipated insurrection. He was making Will choose sides without enough to go on. Like father, caught in the crossfire between Leicester and Edward Arden. Like the Queen herself, balancing her suitors and walking the tightrope of foreign affairs by endless equivocation. Like Kit, getting the best of both worlds. But none of them had actually made a choice, at least not outwardly. They had paid lip service to a worthy cause, and then belied those promises with their actions.

Just like Will.

He leaned his head in his hands, and words that he’d never planned to tell anybody came tumbling out of his mouth. “The same old shit just continues, on and on,” he sighed. “Nothing is ever new. The Queen is dead, long live the King! It’s all one. Birth and death, birth and death, all the people in a stupid procession from cradle to grave, all deluded into believing they can make a difference, or that somehow they matter. They don’t! It’s all fake. Nobody shows their real self. We’re all pretending, doing our desperate little jig of life during the short time that is afforded us and then – nothing. It seems so important, so hectic and filled with meaning, but in the end… there’s just death.”

Doctor Dee said nothing.

“Paradoxically, I’m in this profession because I want to say things.” Will gave a short, bitter laugh. “And that’s the one thing I can’t do.”

“No?”

“Which means that… I betray myself – every day! Because I am who I act. It’s my actions which define me regardless of my personal thoughts. If I don’t act on my beliefs, it doesn’t matter what I believe. If I outwardly adhere to the Protestant faith but secretly believe in Catholicism, I’m still a Protestant to the world. And if there is no God, there is no one to see what I secretly think. What I am.”

“But you’re not a Catholic.”

Not stopping to wonder how Doctor Dee could possibly make such a claim, Will said, “That’s just an example. What I mean is, whatever the area, if I don’t follow my inner truth, I lose my claim on it. As soon as I don the mask, I become the mask, because that’s the only thing the audience sees. They have no interest in what I believe off stage. So when I follow rules I don’t believe in, and act on those rules just to save my own skin, I’m no better than whoever invented them. Because I am only what I show, and thoughts are worthless without the deed.”

Doctor Dee cocked his head as if to object. But then he gave a little nod, and his eyes glittered with all the joy of a fellow foreigner hearing his native tongue for the first time in many years.

“If I condone the state’s actions,” Will went on, “I am the state. Even the hangman does what others tell him, but he does wield the knife. Without him, no one would cut open the traitor’s stomach or pull out his entrails. Even if he just follows orders, his hands are painted red with the victim’s blood. If he didn’t perform the act, that person would live, no matter what the Privy Council decided. So if everyone refused to do their bidding, they would have to do it themselves. It’s us. We’re the ones who give them their power.”

Doctor Dee nodded sagely.

“And I’m afraid of becoming this person that I’m impersonating! What if I play this part for so long that ‘I’ disappear? What if I argue for a case I don’t believe in for so long that I lose the ability to discern my own opinions? If I disguise myself until I don’t know what is the disguise and what is me? I’ll become Walsingham, or Poley. Thoughts are nothing. Actions are everything. It doesn’t matter that I once believed in something better, that I’m really not this person, because if I play this person… this person is who I am.”

Dee nodded again, but not in agreement. “You do say what you mean in your plays, though.”

Will leaned his head in his hands. His forehead was damp. “Do I?”

“Yes. If people know what to listen for, they will hear.”

Will shook his head against his palms. He had had ideals once, but they were long since buried in the practical concerns of adulthood. Had he betrayed the child he had once been?

“I’m not so sure that people do hear, though,” he choked out. “It’s hidden too deep.”

“So what is it that you truly want to say?”

When Will didn’t answer, Doctor Dee shuffled his papers together and put them away. Then he turned and smiled, for all the world like a father who was sure his wayward son would settle down and become his own man. “You’ll be alright.”

 ***

Not a great fan of the arts, King James still ended up summoning the famous Chamberlain’s Men – or the tatters that were left of them after this plague-ridden autumn – to Wilton House for an impromptu performance.

“I suppose the boredom of country life finally wore him down,” Augustine  grinned as they scurried to arrange their props. There was a murmur of chuckles, but it died down sooner than it should. Darting glances among the Men revealed their unspoken fear: somehow this play had them rattled like superstitious schoolboys. Perhaps they too had got the Choice lecture from Doctor Dee, and were afraid that this play was somehow sealing their fate.

And the path they were treading truly was a dangerous one. This was their first royal performance under the new King, and they weren’t showing a reliable classic like Merry Wives or The Shrew. No, they flew headlong into the unknown with a play that seemed to unravel the very fabric of reality. Despite the fact that it was a comedy, there was plenty in there to give offence: an evil and illegitimate ruler, that James could imagine to be a portrait of him. The rightful duke holding court in the wild – an allusion to Scotland?

It felt like uttering a phrase in a foreign language, and waiting to see what it meant from the reaction of the native speaker.

Concealed behind the curtain, Will watched as the play unfolded. The words flowed, natural and unencumbered. The scenes wove into each other, perfect like flowers opening to the sun.

And yet he realised that it wasn’t working. The carefully crafted verse beat its wings a few turns around the room and then dropped to the floor, unheeded and unapplauded. The King was yawning and drinking, chattering with his queen. His nobles followed suit, puppets that they were. The contrast to Elizabeth’s rigid court was striking, and Will found that he preferred hers. I really am growing old. Kit would laugh at me.

Kit…

When he’d died, Will had vowed never to put quill to paper again, and yet the opposite had happened. The ink had swallowed all his grief. Like the sea, its hunger was endless. Words were his only solace, poetry his only life buoy. Lost in a dark and hollow place that had no name, the only thing he could do was to describe it.

He was jarred out of his reverie by a sudden hush on the other side of the curtain. No one was chattering or chewing or burping or slurping. He looked up, strained his ears. Not even the actors could be heard. Had they forgotten their lines? Was the King angry?

Getting up from his chair, Will crept towards the slit in the curtain, dreading what he would see. He reached it just in time to see Orlando and Ganymede kneeling, and Celia holding a hand over them in mock benediction. When he squinted to make out the audience, he could see King James’s mouth hanging open, moisture glistening on his nether lip. His queen sat beside him, stone-faced, and Will remembered something Kit had once said about the Scottish king, about how he wouldn’t hang the likes of us.

Could it be…?

Guilty creatures at a play…

Will swallowed and gripped the curtain.

“I take thee Rosalind for wife,” Orlando breathed into the unnatural quiet. It was supposed to be a funny scene, a handfasting version of the bed-trick, but something had changed. Richard’s voice was raucous and soft at the same time. Will felt his stomach turn and his chest grow wings. The moment was sacred.

“I might ask you for you commission,” Christopher whispered. “But I do take thee Orlando for my husband.”

The impossible was happening. They were going to kiss. They had refused during rehearsals, citing their clothes as reason: How can we kiss if Christopher is wearing the Ganymede costume? It’ll feel like kissing a man! Will had said nothing, hadn’t called their ridiculous bluff. He’d only shrugged and told himself that it had been a wild gamble anyway.

But he remembered wearing his male apparel and still melting under Kit’s eyes, still growing hot and cold in his arms, still throbbing with lust. They couldn’t know, but kissing between men was possible. Even in a doublet and hose.

And now it happened. Richard leaned in and reached for Christopher’s lips with his. Christopher relaxed in his arms and even gasped, falling open for his fellow player. Will struggled to go on breathing. This trumped anything Kit had ever accomplished. He’d had Ganymede sit on Jove’s lap for a couple of minutes, he’d let Edward II pine for his Gaveston. But he hadn’t shown this: two men, dressed as men, losing themselves in each other.

In the grips of the story they were acting out – how else could it happen? – their mouths pressed together. Will’s stomach bottomed out at the sight. Still, after all these years, his breath still hitched at the memory of those lips, the way they yielded to his. As if there was a Paradise on Earth. As if there was salvation to be had from a fellow human being. As if sinning was the natural state of man.

Ganymede and Orlando parted and opened their eyes, looking dazed. Nobody made a sound. Everyone knew that beneath the boy’s masculine clothing, there lurked a female character, but they also knew that an illusion was being dispelled. That this was a direct comment on the fact that all the time, in full view on the English stage, men were kissing. The only thing that made this kiss different was Orlando: he was the only person in the room who believed the youth before him was a boy.

And he still kissed him.

After a long pause, Christopher cleared his throat to find his voice. “There’s a girl goes before the priest,” he grinned, breathless. “And certainly a woman’s thought runs before her actions!”

As Will strained to see through the gloom, he thought he could make out a happy smile on the face of the King. And, like a flutter of premonition left over from his visit to Doctor Dee, he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Chamberlain’s Men had made it through.

They’d made themselves new.

Remember Atlantis (teaser)

Chapter 1

 Nobody knows I’m here.

That’s the thought which keeps looping through my brain as the plane starts to descend. It’s the most reassuring thought I’ve had for six months. I didn’t even tell my friends or family that I was going. I just went to the travel agency and asked for a last minute ticket to anywhere, preferably warm, and they whipped out a brochure with white and blue houses and lots of ancient history to feed my soul. “Perfect,” I said and gave them my credit card. Anything to get out of that hellhole.

And now I’m actually here. I haven’t dared believe it until now, but as I gaze out of the window, there is only the sapphire sea all around. The main body of the Mediterranean is behind us, and we have entered the air space above the Aegean. It’s dotted with grey-green islands full of olive groves, vineyards and bougainvillea. The tensions of teaching fall away as I stare at the seascape spreading out beneath me.

This will be pure pleasure. A true holiday. I’m not even going to listen to the news while I’m here. I will do nothing that can remind me of the treadmill of breadwinning, the snide comments about my long hair, the rolling eyes that say my subject isn’t real, isn’t needed. The local politics which have me plying my trade in a cramped and mouldy little room underneath the canteen, because ‘you can fit a few children and some guitars in there, can’t you?’.

I bite down on unspoken retorts and turn the volume up on my mobile. Dio’s voice gains force and pounds into my ears, lends me strength, and my stomach muscles clench with the hope that this trip will be the start of something new. That when I come home again, I will have gained the courage to leave my job, to find out what I want, to do what I believe in.

A strange sound saws at my ears and I jump. I frown at the screen of my phone, which is flickering and greying. Static chops up the beginning guitar solo and the notes sway precariously, as if they were playing on an old tape recorder. I catch a flight attendant making a grim face at me, and I realize that I should switch it off. Perhaps it’s because of the pilots speaking to the control tower that my phone is acting up. Sighing, I oblige. The battery is only at 50% anyway. Might as well preserve some juice for the inevitable bus trip.

“What were you listening to?”

I start and turn to look at the guy sitting next to me. A quick assessment tells me he’s not an obvious weirdo, although he looks somewhat geeky. But I have no need of social contact, so I decide to put him off. “Stargazer,” I say curtly, offering nothing more. I’m not in the mood to explain, to be friendly and forthcoming. I get enough of that in my line of work, and this is supposed to be a holiday. I’m not starting it by making friends with some random fellow tourist who can’t bear to be alone.

To my surprise, he breaks into a grin and nods. “Don’t you just love how the tape echo at the end of the solo sounds like a flock of birds?”

I try to hide my shock, but I’m not doing a very good job of it. He chuckles at me, and I need to say something, to reward him for his good taste or something. “You… you…?” I try for a polite question, but my mind is a blank.

“I do research on ancient music.”

That was not what I was expecting. How did we move from Rainbow to Einstein? “Ancient music?” I repeat. “Like notation and stuff?”

He looks a bit sheepish. Maybe he realizes that he’s being too chatty. “Well… I study how music can be preserved, with a focus on the Minoan period. So there isn’t a lot of sheet music.”

I scowl. I may not be a researcher, but I’m a music teacher, and I know there was no bloody sheet music in the bloody Minoan period. “So it’s shards of pottery and stuff?”

He looks momentarily stunned. “Others have found traces of songs on old pots, yes.” After a moment’s hesitation, he grins. “Isn’t it fascinating? Someone sat there a long time ago, etching a pattern into the clay with a pin, and what they hummed while they worked was eternalized in the finished crockery…”

Eternalized. Jeez. But at least he seems to like his work, right? It’s just… that doesn’t really help. Because men like him intimidate me. Rational, level-headed, single-minded and able to pursue one single goal. He’s even wearing the token black polo-neck, uniform of intellectuals everywhere. Symbol of superiority to a man like me, who will never reach their lofty spheres. I’m much too emotional, too childish and spontaneous, too easily distracted. I’ve heard myself described in whispered conversations as feminine – not in manners, speech or looks, but in the way my brain is wired.

Which is infinitely worse, I guess. Because no one has need for dreamers anymore. They are the stuff of legend, a quaint relic from a more primitive time. Now we’ve done away with ghosts and symbols, we can live life like we’re meant to: in rational reflection, in order and prudence. But I’m a scatter-brained musician with too little talent and a yearning to change the world. Where in evolution does that fit in?

“You’re a performer, then?” he asks.

“Yes, professor,” I snap, and immediately regret my harsh tone. He sits back and visibly debates with himself, perhaps deciding to give up his efforts at chitchat. I fumble for something to smooth over my unfriendly reaction. I must be really worn down if I can’t even manage a normal conversation without lashing out. “Um… so… you’re here on holiday too?” I finally ask, hoping that this is a comparatively safe topic.

He smiles, relaxing again. “I actually live here.”

“Oh… Lucky you.”

He bursts into such candid laughter that I’m tempted to join in, but I limit myself to a small smile. I’m not ready to forgive him for being too smart yet.

“Well, there are perks, I guess,” he says. “But many problems, too.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Like?”

“Like there’s no drinking water, so we’re dependent on transports from other islands?” he offers, and I make a sympathetic face. Then he looks past me, and his face softens. “It is beautiful, though…”

Prompted by his dreamy expression, I look out of the window again. I expect to make out tiny flowering gardens down there, but for a moment, all I see is blue. Not an island in sight. It actually looks as if we’re going to land on the water. But then the plane veers right and a startling sight comes into view: a monster of a mountain, towering above a small, dark grey beach.

As the first few houses appear, I feel a welcome pang of happiness. This is something new. Something I’ve never seen before. Just what I need to get me out of the depressive coma I’ve been buried in for half a year. Nothing has been able to touch me – but now the sight of those houses, so different from the timbered cottages at home, gives me hope somehow. Because this was why I went here in the first place.

I’ve been poring over maps for days, planning my visit to the museum, the ruins and the vineyards. I’ve looked at postcards of the fish-carrying man and felt the excitement of the unknown surge inside me. I long to see the ruins of an earlier civilization – it gives me hope that ours will also fade away with time, that all the heart-ache of this godforsaken century will disappear and be forgotten.

I catch my neighbour watching me watch the island, and perhaps some of my appreciation shines through, because he holds out his hand with a warm smile. “Marco.”

I hesitantly take it. I’m poised on the brink of friendship here, and I’m not sure I want friends. I came here to be alone, to sort myself out, to listen to music that I actually like and make a lonely climb up the mountain to see ancient Thira. I was going to lose myself in the planet’s past, in people long dead, in the ruins of Greek history, not to socialize with its living, breathing inhabitants. I was going to shut myself away in headphones and alcohol, but now that future is almost lost.

“Alexander.”

Marco seems to sense my reserve, because he smiles again and says, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to invite you to dinner. I know how you Swedes are.”

I breathe in to object, or to ask how he’s so sure that I’m from Sweden since this flight started in Macedonia, but whatever I planned to say is blown to kingdom come by the violent jolt that tears through the plane.

I clutch the seat and sit up straight. What the hell? For a moment it feels as if I’m floating, that the only thing holding me in place is my seatbelt. But then the plane moves smoothly again, and I almost think that it was all in my imagination.

“Jesus,” I breathe out and turn to Marco to make a joke out of my childish fright, but then another shudder runs through the cabin and we’re in free fall.

I’m dreaming. I must be.

No, I’m not! We’re falling, tumbling through empty space. The body of the plane is squeaking and trembling, and gravity is pulling us down towards the black depths of the Aegean. I’m vaguely aware of screams filling the cabin, but they fade away as my head brims over with my own personal panic, and a strange sound that I have never heard before – some kind of Morse code inside my head, or a voice, I don’t know. It’s not coming over the PA system, it’s inside me, as if my brain is picking up the sound waves directly from the air.

I don’t have time to understand it. I feel my fingers going numb on the seat, and in some sane part of my brain I know that I should be leaning forward in that crash landing position that’s always in the safety instructions, but I can’t seem to move. The universe is spinning and whirling around me, and black spots blur my vision. I try to say something, or to scream like the others, but the speed has stolen my voice. I’m on a rollercoaster, with the wind in my mouth, and I can’t even breathe.

Within seconds, or perhaps eons, there’s a muffled crashing sound, and white spray washes up the window beside me. This isn’t happening, my mind keeps telling me, but it is. There’s a sickeningly buoyant rebound, and the taste of my earlier sip of Cabernet resurfaces at the back of my throat.

I’m going to break. I won’t survive this – my mind won’t survive this face to face confrontation with death. It will shut down and save me from experiencing my own end…

Next thing I know, I’m scrambling with my fellow passengers towards the emergency exit. A woman is yanking at the handle, shouting curses, and my hand is painfully wedged in Marco’s, stretched to breaking point as he pulls at it. A surge of anger helps me make an uncharacteristically agile vault over the seat in front of me, and then a rush of warm air is sucked into the plane as the door finally springs open. Handbags and legs and hands swarm over the edge and land on the blinding white surface of the wing. Marco lets go of my hand to clamber out, and I don’t even think, I follow him, even if my legs almost give way as I land on the hollowly clonking metal beneath my feet.

“We have to swim!” he calls over his shoulder. “It’s not far!”

But I just stand there, swaying on the wing, groggily staring at the beach, so close and yet so far away. The world is slowly bobbing up and down, and at any moment now, I will fall…

He grabs my arm and shouts into my face. “Now!”

“But my phone…” I whisper stupidly, gesturing towards the plane.

“Fuck your phone! Come on.”

But I’ve already turned back, moving against the current, towards the black hole in the wall. I’m stopped by a strong hand yanking at my collar. Such strong hands for a science geek? I think distractedly, and then I’m dragged to the edge of the wing, looking down into the opaque water. From the beach, cries can be heard. People in swimsuits are waving and hollering at us. What do they want?

“Jump!”

The water is surprisingly cold. Isn’t this supposed to be the Mediterranean? I find myself wondering as I flail my arms and struggle to swim despite the weight of my shirt and trousers dragging me down. I draw rasping, desperate breaths between arm-strokes, and my mouth floods with salty water. Perhaps I should be surprised that my shocked system is functioning at all, but my body-memory is kicking in where my mind is failing. That, and something else that I can’t name. There’s that Morse code in my head again, calling to me in the voice of a siren, and I know that I must make it.

My arms burn with the strain. My lungs ache. I’ve lost sight of Marco. The salt gets in my eyes, blinding me. The only thing guiding me across the dark abyss, the miles and miles of black water underneath me, is that ethereal almost-voice. It trembles through me like heat over a summer road, lighting me up. For a moment, I imagine that I see it reflected as a colour at the bottom of the sea: turquoise and impossible, it gleams up at me like a sunken dream, and it makes me so scared that I moan aloud as I struggle the final hundred yards to shore.

Gagging and spluttering, I pull myself onto the pebbly beach. I’m wracked with dry sobs, entirely spent. I want to sleep, to know no more. This is a far cry from the quiet bustle of the local airport that I thought would welcome me to Santorini. Instead of tax free perfume and a jovial customs officer, the painful smoothness of sun-burnt stones sears my cheek. I can’t seem to move anymore, even to alleviate the pain.

Around me, agitated voices are chattering in Greek and Italian and Norwegian, and I feel their hands on me, dragging me out of the water. I roll onto my back and gasp at the sky. I gulp the air as if it’s my first taste of oxygen. Am I saved? Will I ever be safe again?

As I lie there, trying to remember how to breathe, I see a cloud of smoke rise from the mountain – an errant plane part crashing into the ancient city of Thira, destroying the ruins I’d hoped to go see? The people around me erupt in new bursts of unintelligible distress, but none of them are pointing up there. They’re still watching the bedraggled tourists coming in hordes from the ocean.

Only me. I’m the only one who saw.

If indeed it was real. Maybe my eyesight is distorted by the salt. Maybe the shock is making me see things. Maybe…

I sit up and rub my face, and an insistent voice in my ear is telling me in broken English to try to stand up, to come away from the shoreline, to have a drink. I almost decline the offer, but then I think what the hell. This holiday is shot to hell anyway. Whatever notions I had of spending my time as an anonymous alien at a beachside bar, gorging himself on grilled squid in splendid isolation, are blown to smithereens.

So I stand up on shaky legs and flash my best charmer’s smile, suppressing the urge to breathe a deep sigh of regret. “A glass of wine would be lovely, thank you.”

Coming soon

Apathy, the rubber screen

There’s an invisible screen between me and the Thing, made of some kind of rubbery material. Every time I try to reach past the screen and Do It, my hand bounces back as if I’m trying to punch through a trampoline. I tell myself, Just do it. Just ignore the rubber screen and grab the Thing and do it.

And yet my hand bounces back.

I sit and stare at it for a while. Am I crazy? How can I not do the Thing when my brain tells me to? When my whole being knows that I have to? Is it laziness? Rebelliousness? Depression? What?

And the day passes.

Snap out of it, they say. You can do it.

Yeah? Well, then you do it.

Oh, I couldn’t possibly. I’m not smart/gifted/good like you. But you can. You can do the Thing I don’t know anything about, because that’s the trope we like to tell each other and call it Comfort.

Well I can’t. Look at how I can’t. Look at all these months when I didn’t, because there’s a rubbery screen.

I can’t see a screen.

I know. Neither can I. But it’s there, and my hand can’t reach through it.

LOL.

I mean it.

LOL. It’ll be okay. You’re so good at everything, you can do it.

And the weeks pass.

Why do we eat what we eat?

If you’ve ever been annoyed by what someone eats, or by people who have opinions about what you eat, or by the conflicting food ideals you’re expected to navigate in this life, you might want to take an hour and a half of your life to listen to this.

Frosty eyelashes

What are the odds?

You know why I write? Because life is effing strange, that’s why. And I want to document, explore and exploit that strangeness.

I’m sitting here in the living room with my husband, listening to Saxon’s Crusader, and I’m looking at the album cover. Suddenly my eyes snag on the coat of arms worn by one of the soldiers, and I sit up straight and burst out, “It’s the Henry IV coat of arms! But he didn’t go on a crusade, did he? The play starts with him complaining that he’s too ill to go. Not that Shakespeare got his reputation for being historically accurate, but…”

And so on and so forth. Geeky, yes. But the geekiness isn’t the point. It’s the utter randomness of it all.

Let’s look at the chain of events. Once upon a time in a random country, a random king chose a perhaps not so random coat of arms. It contained the French fleur de lys and the English lion, since his ancestors (and his son) laid claim to France.

A couple of hundred years later, a random Warwickshire boy writes about him, and it’s a hit. The success of his plays are so enduring that, four hundred years later, they’re still produced all over the world. Including the one about the random king.

Enter an even more random player in this strange, eventful history: a Swedish fifteen year old girl who travels to England with her parents to cycle all through the summer and watch a few plays in Stratford. One of the plays is the Adrian Noble production of Henry IV part 1&2, and the girl falls so hard for it that she gets a concussion. Twenty-five years later, she’s still obsessive enough to write a blog post about it. Twenty-five years later, the coat of arms with the fleur de lys and the lion still mean something to her. Those symbols that have long since lost their original meaning for most people — for her, they’re the epitome of nostalgia.

I mean… you couldn’t think it up if you tried!

And now imagine something from our own time and place having that kind of symbolic value for somebody in 500 years’ time. For example, the Swedish king’s official motto having sentimental value to someone in 2416 Argentina.

Mind-bogggling, isn’t it? But it happens. It happens all the time. As humans, we seek for patterns and symbols in everything, and the meanings of artifacts change and change again, moving in and out of the personal, in and out of the general.

The distorted echoes of history. Seriously. It’s the reason to write.

How to know what to like

I’ve been moaning for a while about how it’s not really winter, but now that winter has suddenly dealt us a right hook, I’m left reeling and not at all enjoying it. Well, apart from the fabulous view from my office window, of course… You don’t get beauty like that without -25 C (-13 F).

Which leads me to the problem of liking things. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” I hear you say, “is that a problem, too? Is this girl never satisfied?” Well, yes and no. I do have bursts of uncontrolled excitement, but afterwards they leave me embarrassed. To quote a friend, “No one can be as enthusiastic as Ingela.”

But there’s also the side of me that likes to pick things apart to see how they work, and that includes happiness and humour. Perhaps it ruins the fun for everyone else to have it dissected, but then that’s life, and the only known cure is a tad drastic.

Anyway. When I long for winter, it’s the image of winter I long for. Frosty windows, aurora borealis, glittering snowdrifts, piercing stars and tumbling flakes. The postcard version of winter. The surreal blue glow of the moon over a frozen lake.

And then there’s reality. When you venture out into that sparkling white landscape, it soon reminds you of your mortality. I’m not talking about the shivers you get from mild slush. I’m talking real, dangerous cold. The -37 C (-34 F) of my childhood. The kind of cold that makes you realize that if you were stuck in a broken-down car in the middle of nowhere, you wouldn’t survive. The kind of cold that pierces down, fleece, flannel and cotton like it’s nothing. The kind that comes straight at you from outer space.

So do I really like winter, or am I just romanticizing it? Well, that depends on whether the purely visual experience counts. Similarly, you could question whether you really like people, or if you only like their uncomplicated facade…

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, to be honest. Just that liking things isn’t uncomplicated. What about the thing is it that you like? The complete reality of it, or just one aspect? Do you like thinking of yourself as someone who likes the thing, say a certain band? Does liking it demand complete loyalty of you, and would you be excluded from a group of fans if you admitted to not liking, say, a certain song?

We don’t just like things because they please our senses. We like things because we want to fit in. We like things because it makes us into particular kinds of people that we wish to be. Our hobbies, clothes, food habits and taste in music build our identities and showcase them to the world. Otherwise we wouldn’t have guilty pleasures, or hesitate before we allow Spotify to post what we listen to on Facebook. Because shock horror if someone saw our vulgar disco playlist!

This may be a hard pill to swallow. The things that give us joy feel very intimate to us, and it can be difficult to acknowledge that part of why we like something is the prestige attached to it. But sometimes that knowledge can help us let go of things that we can’t really relate to — things that we’re tired of pretending to like, just because everyone else does. It can also help us confess that we like things that people around us think is rubbish.

So go on, eat that over-the-top dessert with chocolate sauce, marshmallows and sprinkles, and listen to that maligned teen pop idol if you want. Allow yourself to long for the image of winter, and nip out for five minutes to look at the stars before scuttling back inside to watch TV. It’s all good.

Happy Twelfth Night!

Tonight is Twelfth Night, which used to be kind of important. I guess it was the last night when you could get pissed before going back to work.

I’ve given the date a passing nod in Rival Poet, where Will and his friends use it as an excuse to play a practical joke on the pompous Robert. But most people wouldn’t go that far in their celebrations. They’d have a special cake with a dried pea in it, and whoever got the pea would be Lord or Lady of Misrule for the night.

They’d also play snapdragon, a game which goes horribly awry in the following snippet from Will’s childhood.

***

“William!” Mother hurried across the yard of grandmother’s farmhouse to meet him as he jumped off Uncle Edmund’s carriage. “Oh, William, you look better…”

He sank into her embrace, hiding his face for a moment, hoping that the change he had undergone wasn’t truly visible to the naked eye. He had indeed recovered from the fever, the reason why he was sent away in the first place, but another illness had taken its place, one which burned far worse. The new plague had driven the old one out, and Will could no longer remember what he had felt like back in Stratford.

And yet this infant passion wasn’t even real, but induced by a mere image, a fictitious inner world built by words, by air. It was nothing, and still it was too strong for him. Only when he was sleeping, fitfully and in the clutch of endless strange dreams, did the quill rest, securely stowed away with his sprawling efforts under the mattress. During all waking hours, it was enclosed in his cramping hand, fretfully doing his bidding.

“The country air has done you good, I see,” father smiled, his eyes mild and dewy as he greeted his prodigal son.

“You’ve missed so much at school,” Gilbert muttered and shook hands dutifully. “I can’t even begin to tell you…”

“Then don’t.”

“Boys, boys,” father hushed them. “Don’t start.”

“Will!” Annie came running out of the house as fast as her chubby little legs could carry her. She tripped on her dress and flew headlong into the gravel, and there was a gasp of parental anxiety, but then she burst out laughing and got to her feet. Will smiled and kneeled to receive her, remembering his own days as a small boy in a dress. They were not happy memories, and he was grateful that he was of a gender that changed into hose at six years of age. Opening his arms, he lifted Annie up and she settled on his hip so that he could also greet Joanie with a one-armed hug.

He had barely seen any of them for two months, and now that he did, he felt so much older. Whatever they might think, he hadn’t wasted his time in the country on idleness. Master Hunt may have crammed the rest of the boys in his class with rules of rhetoric, but Will had done something infinitely better. He had surpassed Dick in the one area where he had always been superior: the dull wielding of the quill. And it was Master Hunt who had inadvertently given Will his weapon. During his months of physical incapacitation he had learnt a whole book by heart and rearranged it into entirely new pieces of poetry. If it had been in Latin he could have quit school right now.

The weight of an excitedly babbling Annie on his arm, he went inside and greeted his grandparents. The house was quickly filling with aunts and uncles and cousins of all shapes and sizes, gathering to celebrate the twelve days of Christmas at the birthplace of the Arden sisters.

“Make way for the pièce de resistance!” Will’s new uncle Cornwell hollered and dragged the carcass of a boar over the threshold, to the whoops and laughs of the other men and the condescending tutting of the women.

“Yes indeed, the boor has arrived,” Uncle Henry muttered.

“Jeal-ous…” Cornwell sang under his breath, evidently pleased with himself. The skin around Uncle Henry’s mouth whitened and Aunt Margaret fidgeted uncomfortably.

“Don’t bring that thing into the house,” she hissed at her new husband. “Take it to the kitchen for the women to prepare.”

“There, there, let’s not start Christmas this way,” father urged, ever the diplomat. “Remember the reason why we’re here.”

“Well, Margaret has goodwill towards men at least,” Uncle Henry scoffed, but was silenced by his elder brother with a stern frown.

“Come, we’ll be friends,” Uncle Edmund declared and clapped his hands. “How about a game of snapdragon while the ladies prepare for dinner? That’ll cheer us all up, won’t it?”

“I don’t know if there will be raisins enough for the sweetmeats,” Aunt Joan whispered.

“I’m sure you can do without some of them,” Uncle Edmund smiled, but something about his smile said that he was not to be contradicted. A large fistful of raisins was duly poured into a bowl, smothered with brandy and set on fire. Annie clambered onto a chair and laughed in excitement at the exotic spectacle of flames leaping from a bowl, the sweet, burnt aroma already spreading Christmas cheer through the house.

“Come on you sissies!” Uncle Edmund bellowed. “Who’s first?”

The men and the teenage boys grimaced at each other and cracked jokes to fire themselves up to the task, but before any of them had worked up the courage, Annie flung herself across the table to reach the bowl. Only Will saw it, but before he could react, she had dipped her whole hand into the bluish flames. With a howl she pulled back her hand. The violent motion spilled half the contents onto the table and the burning liquid washed over her arm with a sickening hiss. The drunken adults didn’t have the wits to react as she toppled backwards on the chair, stepped on air and fell.

Will hurled himself to the floor and caught her, buckling under her weight. Mother came running from the parlour.

“What on earth is going… Annie!”

She tore the child from Will, which set off new screams.

“You have to take care of her arm!” Will told her, but mother didn’t hear him. The rest of the women were quickly gathering around the scene, and Will scrambled to his feet to pull at Aunt Joan’s kirtle. “She needs treatment!”

“What?”

“She burned her arm on the brandy!”

Aunt Joan took one look at the wet sleeve clinging to Annie’s arm and immediately ordered that she be laid on the bed. Grabbing her husband’s dagger, she ripped the fabric open and revealed an explosion of blisters underneath. There was a collective gasp of horror and mother cried for water, but Aunt Joan dashed to the kitchen and came back with a mortar and an armful of assorted leaves. Mashing the ingredients together, she covered Annie’s arm with the resultant salve and wound strips of cloth around it. Will watched her working and remembered with new born nostalgia how she had tended him that way when he first arrived in Barton. Mother knew her way around the common medicinal herbs as well as any housewife, but Aunt Joan was phenomenal. When asked about her sister’s miraculous cures, mother invariably changed the subject – whether out of jealousy or something else, Will had no idea. But now that her weeping three-year-old was at the mercy of that same sister’s powers, there wasn’t a glimmer of protest.

Annie’s hysterical crying slowly abated and she watched with sporadic hiccups at the things being done to her arm.

“There.” Aunt Joan tied the ends of the bandage on Annie’s arm. “You’ll be right as rain in no time.”

There was a prolonged, awkward silence and then Aunt Joan got to her feet and started mopping up the now-cold brandy from the table.

“I hope you’re not throwing that away,” Uncle Henry attempted to joke. He was awarded with a cross glare. “Sorry, I’m just saying… It’s expensive stuff.”

“Yes, well, it did a good job of ‘cheering us all up’, didn’t it?” Aunt Joan retorted. Uncle Edmund acknowledged the savage criticism with a ripple of his jaw muscles.

Quieter games ensued, the women attended to their duties in the kitchen and soon everyone was served with a steaming mug of mulled wine. The younger children engaged in a round of ‘shoe the mare’, and Will tried to take part, but they soon tired of his uninspired contribution and left him alone. While no one looked he crept away to the room he was to share with his family during their stay in Wilmcote and rummaged through his things in search of Ovid.

It wasn’t there. He frowned. Had he left it in Barton? That would be unbelievably stupid, since he would be going directly to Stratford after Twelfth Night. This was bad. He cursed at himself as he fervently searched his clothes again and again, but Metamorphoses was nowhere to be seen. The tiny hairs on his neck rose in apprehension. He had been afraid of what Master Hunt would say about the desecrated book with its original text completely covered by the new one, but what if it was lost altogether?

Just then grandmother’s head appeared in the door.

“Dinner is served. Everyone’s there except you.”

Will hurried after her to the parlour and mingled with the rest of the party who were just now taking their seats. Uncle Henry tried to grab the chair beside Aunt Margaret, but Cornwell effectively stopped him. Annie was allowed to sit in mother’s lap, while the rest of the younger children stood at their designated end of the table. Everyone began eating in silence. The morning’s debacle with the brandy had left its mark on the atmosphere and nothing seemed capable of erasing it. Will could see father trying to think of something merry to say but failing. Only the boar’s head in the middle of the table smiled to himself at some secret joke.

“Jesus, this mood better befits Good Friday,” Cornwell muttered.

“So, how long is your son staying for?” Uncle Edmund asked pleasantly. “He eats like a horse, you know!”

“Don’t worry, they will compensate us,” Aunt Joan smiled with a tentative look at mother. Uncle Edmund scoffed.

“It’s not the money. I just think it’s time Will went back to Stratford – he’s getting better, isn’t he?” His tone was still light, but his face was slightly drawn. He might as well have said that he was sick of having the little runt around. “A boy his age mustn’t be coddled, or he’ll become soft. We can’t keep him here forever.”

Why not, Will wanted to ask, but held his tongue. Inside him, an icicle was forming where his heart had been. The message was clear. After the festivities he must go home – if home it was. It felt more like being banished.

“Look at him, he’s already pouting,” Uncle Edmund laughed. “He’s becoming as wilful as you, Joan. Phaugh! Arden blood, I tell you…”

Neither Aunt Joan nor mother nor any of their sisters responded to the taunt. Mother just grabbed her wineglass and downed half of it in one swig. Will hunched his shoulders, trying to become invisible. He could see things. If he just sat there, silently, and disappeared, there were stories all around him: Uncle Henry was still jealous of Uncle Cornwell, his mouth twitched with anger every time he looked at him. He knew much more than they thought. By not being seen, he could observe and learn. If only he could do that in school as well, instead of trying to show off… But then again, what good was knowledge if you couldn’t show it off?

So if he were to tell on them, what then? He would change the outcome. But if he just watched without taking part, he could see the natural outcome. Was it his duty to tell on Uncle Henry, or his duty to refrain, to protect everyone, to keep the status quo?

An uncomfortable silence threatened to choke everyone at the table, when Cousin John suddenly stood up.

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “I know something that will cheer us up.”

“Another genius idea?” Aunt Margaret grimaced, but John was not to be dissuaded. Wiping his mouth, he produced a small book from his sleeve. “Now listen to this, Annie. This’ll make you laugh.”

He winked at the girl and she watched him, tentatively interested. Will stared at the book. There was something decidedly familiar about it. Then his chest contorted as he caught a glimpse of the title. It was Ovid! He bounded to his feet and tried to snatch it, but John was prepared for that and sidestepped him, laughing and waving it over his head where Will couldn’t get at it.

“What are you doing?” Aunt Joan scolded. “Sit down immediately!”

John snorted with mirth.

“I’d just like to take this opportunity to introduce you all to our household poet. You have no idea what a little perv we’ve got under our roof…”

Will reddened, fear closing his throat.

“Give it to me!” he rasped, but John just giggled childishly and started reading aloud:

“When Cupid lay asleep, a nymph did quickly steep, his arrow of love-fire, in the wettest mire…”

“Stop it,” Will howled, beside himself with shame.

“But his brand still burned, and by this she learned, and can also prove: water cools not love. My, my, but you’re having mature thoughts for such a young one! ‘His arrow of love-fire’… ‘wettest mire’… Who’s the lucky lady?”

“You will not read any more of that in front of the girls!” mother commanded in a tone that cut through John’s jocular mood like a knife. As the young man hesitated, Will managed to grab hold of the book and, by pulling desperately, ripped it in two. Mother turned to father with a savage look on her face.

“See what happens when you let him go to plays?”

“But I didn’t…”

Uncle Edmund laughed heartily. “You should be glad that he’s not a total pansy. There’s good mettle in the boy. Perhaps he’ll grow up to be a proper man after all.”

Annie and Joanie giggled hysterically, but stopped short when mother shot them a murderous look.

“I would never write anything like that,” Gilbert piped up.

“Oh, shut up,” mother snarled, and Gilbert quietened, hurt. Father extended one hand towards John and one towards Will.

“Let me see those.” Neither John nor Will could choose but obey. Father took the two parts of the book. After eyeing the contents of the torn paper, he sighed. “Well… Your handwriting is improving,” he commented drily. “You see how diligence pays off?”

Perplexed, Will mumbled a quiet ‘thank you’. Then he glanced at Aunt Joan, the only one who hadn’t reacted yet. She said nothing, just sat watching the table. Her silence obviously infuriated mother.

“I suppose you’re happy now!”

Aunt Joan looked up in surprise. “Why should I be?”

“You’re the one who’s been sticking all these stories in his head from the moment he was born!”

“Hey, just now you blamed the players,” Uncle Edmund chuckled, trying to placate her. “Make up your mind.”

“The world is full of traps,” mother retorted. “The devil doesn’t just choose one vessel through which to work his mischief.”

Aunt Joan gasped and Will reddened.

“The devil? Mary, it’s Christmas!”

“Yes, and look what instructive reading material we’ve got at our Christmas dinner table. It’s not exactly the gospel, is it?”

Will closed his eyes in mortification. His innermost filth was on display for all to see. He should have died in the fever, should have let the birdman leave his leeches on him until he disappeared from the face of the earth.

“Are you saying that your eldest son is an instrument of Satan?” Aunt Joan whispered.

“I’m saying…” mother began, but stopped. After a slight pause, she started again. “You can all laugh at me, but I don’t want William to grow up to be a heathen. But that seems like a futile wish in this godforsaken family!” Her voice broke and she stood up brusquely. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”